1. Hanan Al Shaykh The Story of Zahra (1986)

2. Hanan Al Shaykh
Profile on Al Ahram Weekly

3. Interview in Tehelka (23.1.2012)
You have pushed the envelope for women writing in the Arab world by transcending boundaries, writing about sex, homosexuality, divorce and abortion. What was that influenced by?
I have been influenced by what was going on around me, my growing up in a religious family, the civil war in Lebanon, migrating to a new culture and of course, the women in my life.
My mother was just nine years old when she was engaged to my father, and then she left us to marry someone else. I have addressed that in my writing. So, the influences have been varied, but yes, writing has been a way to express it all.

4. Interview by Christiane Schlote
Would you say that over the course of your career as a writer, you've endowed your female character with increasing power? For example, starting with the relatively powerless Zahra from The Story of Zahra…?
I tell you what, to start with I never thought, like the readers thought, that Zahra is hopeless. I mean, according to the West, she was very hopeless, she couldn't do anything. But in her own society, she tried to really say no, like even going to Africa, spiting her father in telling him that, although she was not beautiful, beauty wasn't everything. I mean, if she were hopeless, she wouldn't have had a miscarriage, she would have somebody killing her from the family. So, in a way, I mean, she's tragic. But she also tried her best within her limits. She was, I think, stronger than others within her limits. Of course, you know, nowadays, if in twenty years the position of women hadn't changed, we should really lament our situation and our world [laughs]. So in a way, my characters have more, I wouldn't say integrity, but they're more pushy in a way.

5. context The Civil War in Lebanon
The Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) founded by Antoun Saadeh in 1932
United Syrian Nation that “extends from the Taurus range in the northwest and the Zagros mountains in the northeast to the Suez canal and the Red Sea in the south, and which includes the Sinai peninsula and the Gulf of Aqaba; and from the Syrian Sea in the West, including the island of Cyprus to the arch of the Arabian desert and the Persian Gulf in the East”.

6. Kibbe
Warwick DAR page

7. kibbe
Baked in the oven

8. Raw kibbe
To be eaten uncooked

9. Pumpkin kibbe
To be eaten on Fridays

10. Stuffed kibbe
With meat, or with nuts, or a combination of ingredients

11. Consider Engagement and disengagement Extinction and survival
Form and content
Memory and storytelling

12. And finally
Sniper
Diya M Abdo, “Redefining the Warring Self in Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra and Frank McGuinness’ Carthaginians” in Pacific Coast Philology 42:2 (2007) [accessible on JSTOR]
A caricature
Conversation with Salman Rushdie (youtube)